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Melted Butter Sauce

A simple sauce made by melting butter, adding water, flour, lemon juice, pepper, and salt, then simmering until thickened.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Melted Butter Sauce

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Melted Butter Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat.

  2. Add the water and bring to a simmer.

  3. Whisk in the flour until smooth.

  4. Stir in the lemon juice, pepper, and salt.

  5. Cook for a few minutes until thickened.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Provides fat and rich flavour, and helps make the sauce smooth and glossy.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the simmering liquid.
Water
Forms the liquid base that the butter and flour are combined into.

The step that matters

Whisking in the flour. Adding flour to hot liquid without whisking can form lumps, because starch clumps before it disperses. Whisking steadily while adding it keeps the sauce smooth before it thickens.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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